WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. – The latest wrinkle in the taller-is-better construction trend in the West Lafayette Village serves up a couple of mysteries that leave even city planners hanging.

Mystery 1: Just how tall will the latest high rise be along State Street? In an unprecedented request, developers of the Hub Plus project are now asking the Area Plan Commission and West Lafayette to give them the option for a 15-story complex – as the first public documents showed – or for one of 11 stories on land where a gas station sits now, just across from the Triple XXX restaurant.

Mystery 2: If developers go with the smaller version, will it be because they have more plans along State Street, as they have told local planners? And if so, where will that next project go as the fast-moving recreation of the State Street corridor continues?

On Wednesday, Core West Lafayette State Street LLC will take a dual rezoning request to the Area Plan Commission for one acre at 101 State St., midway up the hill leading to the Purdue campus. The project – one that has hardly been a secret in recent months – is by the same partnership of Up Campus Properties and Core Spaces, two Chicago-based firms in the process of building The Hub, a 10-story student housing project that got West Lafayette’s skyward movement going.

In the first design, Hub Plus would reach 15 stories, with a maximum of 860 beds of student housing.

The second option would top out at 11 stories and include 230 fewer beds than the maxed out version, at 630.

Both would include virtually the same 13,200 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. Both would be virtually identical in the way they tie into State Street – a deal-breaking consideration as West Lafayette City Hall gives its blessing on any project so close to the $120 million in work being done to remake the street that cuts through town and into campus. And both provide a stair-step approach to development on State Street hill, allowing an incremental incline to Rise at Chauncey, a 15-story mix of retail and student-oriented housing slated to go in at Chauncey Avenue and State Street, until this summer home to University Lutheran Church.

“When you see the pictures, it is the same building,” said Erik Carlson, West Lafayette redevelopment director. “They’ve just sliced out four floors in the middle.”

Hub Plus, a proposed 15-story apartment and retail complex, would be built at the corner of State and Salisbury streets, where a gas station sits now.(Photo: Dave Bangert/Journal & Courier)

So, why the difference?

Steve Bus, the point person for Core West Lafayette, said that’s something developers are still considering.

“Another 630-bed and 860-bed project under either alternative are both very big projects any way you look at it,” Bus said. “We have no preference for either alternative right now, and we'll internally weigh both.”

But here’s what developers have been telling local planners who have been negotiating the particulars of designs that haven’t been simply left to chance: That four-story slice of student housing could be pulled back so it could be worked into a retail/office/residential project somewhere else along State Street.

Asked about that possibility and where it might go, Bus said he had no comment.

“I’m eagerly awaiting to hear about this other building (Bus) has in mind,” Carlson said. “He has said it will be somewhere along State Street, and that’s it. Until we know more, we can’t say whether it’s a plan we’d support or not.”

Ryan O’Gara, APC assistant director, said planners have agreed to rezonings that allow for the conversion of housing into ground-level restaurants or retail in the past. Knocking out four floors in height and density is another matter. Still, the APC staff released a report late last week that recommended approval of both options. O’Gara said both fit with the new look, feel and market along State Street.

The mystery, though, had him wondering, too.

“You can probably count on your hand the development sites you might have left on State Street that are viable,” O’Gara said. He checked off a number of prime State Street properties, including those currently housing a McDonald’s, Rubia Flowers, Sparkletone Dry Cleaning, Campus Inn and the recently closed Von’s Dough Shack.

“Believe me,” O’Gara said, “I’m guessing as much as you about where it might be. … It could be any of those. I don’t know.”

Carlson said he was in the dark, too. He said he’s been told that the new project could put some 400 beds into the market -- about a 200-bed net gain if Hub Plus shrinks to 11 stories.

As for where and specifically what?

“I’ve asked,” Carlson said, “but Steve Bus said he’s not ready yet to talk about it. … My hope is that by the time he comes to city council on Aug. 7, we know exactly which one we’re voting on. He knows I’m not comfortable with the thought of there being two possibilities.”